Apple woes

A quick glance at Apple's share price now shows USD450 bucks a share. Thats a long way down from less than a year ago when Apple was trading at nearly USD750.

People are starting to say the same things that I was saying a few months ago - what is Apple going to do different from the past, to make their products desirable again. Apple themselves is sending out reassurances to the public with Tim Cook saying things like new products will be launched and promising shorter release cycles for new products. There have been rumors of lighter iPads, bigger iPhones and even an iWatch.

Will any of these increasingly desperate looking maneuvers work? After all, what has Apple done in the past to make their products desirable in the first place? Was it to copy what other companies were doing and releasing products faster to meet customer demand and competitor moves? The answer is no.

Steve Jobs understood that his purpose was not to build stuff that people wanted. His magic was to build stuff that people thought was crazy and did not feel they wanted. I still remember five years ago when the iPhone was launched. Apple a phone company? Bah. And a phone without a keyboard? Like what was that about?

I guess the Apple boffins would be thinking hey, we've done a phone, what else can I get consumers to buy and I guess a watch is a great idea since most people use watches and phones on a daily basis. Do I think an iWatch is a good idea? You know what, I think it would appeal to boffins but I dont get a sense that it would catch on in a big way. I could be wrong though.

I personally think Apple will lose the Phone and Pad war. Samsung's copy drones will just copy the heck out of anything Apple comes up with. Apple will become a middling USD200 dollar company soon. However, Apple has bales of cash in its war chest. If I were Tim Cook, I would be looking to move to another green field to apply Apple's transformation and design genius to.

If I were to give a suggestion to Apple on what would work, it would be for some iCar accessories. Cars are notoriously sucky when it comes with user interfaces and interior design and some manufacturers just do not get it. Like have you seen the interior of the latest luxo barges e.g. Jag XJ, Cadilac etc. A lot of wood, a loot of leather and outdated looking dials and clocks. Apple's expertise on UI would transform how we would interact with a car. Can you imagine a really large iPad like screen in the dashboard area in the middle of the car? Cars of the future would be like the deck of the Starship Enterprise with just a few panels and could be operated using "touch". Now that would cool won't it? Apple, are you listening?

Doomsday prepping

During the latest family trip out of Singapore, I happened to have some time to watch some telly. The hotel that we stayed in had two TVs, which meant that I was able to watch some other channels other than the Cartoon Network.

National Geographic has a series called "Doomsday Preppers" where preppers (in some cases "loonies") prep for some end of the world scenario e.g. super volcano, collapse of the economy. Recently, as part of daily YouTube fix of watching videos, I have been watching a lot of of gear reviews around prepping.

One of the hot topics at the moment is Dec 21st and the Mayan prediction of a new phase in the world. Some people have taken this prediction to mean the end of the world and some even have linked this date to the "three days of darkness" prophesy in the Bible.

Against the backdrop of all this doom and gloom, I have been doing a little prepping myself, better to be safe than sorry right?

Some stuff I have been doing:

1. Packed a "bug out bag" - which contains stuff like tarps, ponchos, rope, camping oven, flashlight, knife, first aid kit etc
2. Started stocking up on water and basic foods like rice, canned food, dehydrated soups.
3. Since a human being needs about a gallon of water a day to survive, I have also bought a few types of water filters in case I need to filter rain water to drink. It is possible to extract pure drinking water from any water source using a solar still in the worst case scenario as well.

Have you been preparing for the end of the world? Would love to hear your stories on this topic.

Moving from the iPhone to an Android

iOS and Android don't mix, its quite clear about that. On the other hand, I also think iOS is for dumb or lazy people and Android is for the nerd. After using an iPhone for three years, its pretty hard to move. But move I must.

One of the tasks I am doing during my planning to switch smartphones i.e. from my current iPhone4 to a Samsung Galaxy S3 is to make a small inventory of things that I need to migrate and how I will perform the migration.

• CMPV (contacts, messages, photos and videos) - Apparently there is a free app that does just that called Easy Phone Sync https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.galaxysync.android.app
• Music - copy these out and drag them to the new phone

• Favorites (on Safari) - pretty easy, just type these in

Apps (now this is where it starts gets tricky)
- Bloomberg - I pretty much have to recreate my stock entries
- Watsapp (messaging app) - there is no easy migration path, your best bet is to export each message trail by contact to a txt file and archive it)
- Runkeeper (my exercise app) - not sure.. does Runkeeper migrate?
- Squeezebox Touch app - yes there is an equivalent on Android

Now you know why Apps are so important to phone companies. They lock you into the platform and make it difficult to unstick yourself from it. They are the main reason why a smartphone is great though.

iPhone 5 - a sign of things to come from Apple?

I had - in the quest for the latest and greatest - dutifully queued up at my local telco provider Singtel Apple iPhone "launch" events for the past 2 releases of the iPhone. This year though was different.

First of all, I was utterly disappointed with Singtel not getting its act together in their coordination of the registration process. Their website was inaccessible for most of the registration period and I pretty much gave up. For goodness sake, its not the first time you guys have done this. Time to leave and head for another telco me thinks.

When I finally got my hands (on a friend's) iPhone5 the disappointment deepened. Overall comments from the people who managed to get their iPhone5 was that there was nothing really new in the phone except for the speed increase from the faster processor and 4G support. Nothing new in Apps, except for the much reported buggy Maps application. Nobody really thought that the increased screen size was a big deal since rivals like the Samsung Galaxy and Sony's Xperia already have larger and, I thought, nicer looking screens. The longer screen actually makes the iPhone5 screen look narrower and more "remote control-like" than previous iPhones although this is a bit of an optical illusion.

The big draw of the old iPhones were (to me at least) their designs. I personally thought the iPhone5 was a little bit dull design-wise. There is absolutely no WOW factor. I actually preferred the design of my old iPhone4, with its glass back and aluminum sides. The color choices of only the white and black option show that Apple is unable to break the design protocol defined by Steve Jobs. The white iPhone5 has a really ugly looking two tone back, fussy chrome trim and a weird looking mutated "face" on the top of the phone (see below). I don't think you can find any existing iPhone users who actually prefers the new iPhone5 design over their previous phones.

However, if after my little rant you still want to get one, the black iPhone5 is definitely the one to choose if you really had to have a iPhone5.

So will I buy an iPhone5? Maybe - eventually - when my iPhone4 and/or its accessories die. A big turn-off for me is that the whole world and their grandmother has an iPhone and it has totally lost its cool and uniqueness factor. Apple is a victim of its own success.

I might get one of the Android phones in the meantime as they are significantly cheaper to pickup without a telco contract. The current crop of new Android phones give off a more innovative vibe compared to the iPhone5. Don't confuse me as a Samsung fanboy but anyone who has handled a Samsung Galaxy S2 or S3 will feel like the designers had a brief to be fresh and be bolder with their designs. As I said before in my last post - it really seems that innovation and good design has left Apple, after Steve Jobs left the building.

Apple's iPhone 5 - an expensive proposition in Singapore

Just received some news about a colleague who just collected her iPhone 5.

As most of you probably already know, the iPhone 5 has a new connector which means that all your existing pre-iPhone 5 accessories are made redundant. Ok, there is an adaptor but who likes using adaptors and does this mean you have to have multiple adaptors every where?

The iPhone 5 also has a new SIM card form factor - the nano SIM. The iPhone 4 which was introduced 2 years ago used the micro-SIM card which I guess is redundant now. Singtel - the telco I use in Singapore - is charging SGD39 (USD32) for a nano sim!

You have got to be kidding..

Since my two year old iPhone 4 is on its last legs - the home button died some time ago and the phone is seriously lagging - I was thinking of getting a iPhone 5 but I am now seriously reconsidering getting a Samsung S2 instead. Maybe all sense in Apple is gone ever since Steve Jobs left the building.